End of the COVID-19 federal public health emergency: What’s next

“I think it’s important to recognize that, even though we are certainly at a low point right now with cases and hospitalizations and deaths, that COVID is certainly not done with us yet. We still have about 1,000 Americans dying every week from COVID-19. We still have about 13,000 Americans hospitalized right now with COVID-19. So, these numbers are not zero, and they’re certainly not negligible. And even though we’re far below where we were in previous surges from delta or from omicron, our three year history with this virus does tell us that we should expect more variants to emerge and another surge to come our way. And we should be ready for that.” (Posted May 4, 2023 | Download Video)

Meagan Fitzpatrick, Ph.D.
Assistant professor of medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine Grab This Quote

“As we move forward, heeding the public health guidance will be so important—when vaccines roll out, new delivery mechanisms, new boosters roll out—that we’re following those because, as you know, as a population, as a community, we really need to stay up to date on those vaccines in order to protect the community at large.” (Posted May 4, 2023 | Download Video)

Rebecca Fischer, Ph.D., M.P.H., D.T.M.&H.
Assistant professor of public health, Texas A&M University Grab This Quote

“The way I look at the COVID pandemic is: While some elements are winding down, it’s still very much with us. And we still have quite a bit of COVID transmission. And I think we need to now look at the long game because it’s likely that we’re going to need boosters on a regular basis—certainly a booster this spring. As well as we’re going to pivot towards annual boosters because we’ll likely continue to have waves of COVID-19 each subsequent winter, with some type of seasonality. I think that’s the first point. And I think the second to realize is that COVID-19 is the third major coronavirus epidemic/pandemic we’ve had over the last 20 years. We had SARS, the original SARS in 2002, MERS in 2012, COVID-19. And on that basis, we’re likely to have another major coronavirus epidemic or pandemic before the end of this decade. And so I think getting ready for that—it’s both psychologically, and in practical terms—is going to be really important.” (Posted May 4, 2023 | Download Video)

 

Peter Hotez, M.D., Ph.D.
Co-director, Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development; Dean, National School of Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine Grab This Quote

“In general, the current state of the pandemic is that we’ve seen the lowest number of cases we’ve ever had. And the number of deaths from COVID is fairly low. The two main caveats, however, is that we still don’t know what causes long COVID. So that remains a potential complication for anyone who gets this disease. And also, people who are immunocompromised or people who haven’t gotten COVID or vaccinated, they’re still at risk for severe disease. So, we do need to watch out for those populations.” (Posted May 4, 2023 | Download Video)

Wilbur Lam M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of pediatrics and biomedical engineering, Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center of Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology Grab This Quote

“Since SARS-CoV-2 emerged in January 2020 we’ve never been in a better position than we are now, as far as the severity of COVID is concerned. So, infections are becoming milder. And this is a result of cumulative boosting and vaccination and also the fact that most of us have survived at least one COVID infection up till now. But COVID still has significant impacts on life expectancy at age 65. In 2020 and 2021 it reduced life expectancy by 1.2 years at age 65. And we’re still waiting for the 2022 numbers.” (Posted May 4, 2023 | Download Video)

Andrew Noymer, Ph.D.
Associate professor, population health and disease prevention, University of California, Irvine Grab This Quote

“I think where we are right now with respect to the pandemic is in this kind of transition phase between an epidemic—or even a pandemic—into this kind of endemic phase. But I think it’s a different kind of endemic phase than maybe we expected. I think when we hear the word endemic, sometimes we think that means kind of fading into the background. And what we’re seeing instead is kind of a state of elevated respiratory infection rates overall and death from these kinds of infections in general. And so we’re not reverting back to where we were pre-pandemic, but we’re kind of finding something that looks like a new normal. But it’s not necessarily one that we should be that happy with.” (Posted May 4, 2023 | Download Video)

Jon Zelner, Ph.D.
Associate professor of epidemiology, University of Michigan School of Public Health Grab This Quote

“I think individual Americans are really going to feel the lack of support when it comes to vaccines and when it comes to tests. So right now, vaccines are heavily subsidized through these emergency measures. And those costs are going to be borne instead by insurance companies—maybe by copays by individuals—especially people without insurance are going to find themselves facing real financial barriers to receipt of these vaccines. We all know that more vaccines provide more protection at a population level and an individual level. And then the second thing that I’m concerned about is access to testing. So right now, an insurance company is required to provide eight free tests every month for their members. And once that goes away, it could become a lot harder and a lot more expensive for people to find these at-home tests or to access to the PCR services, which also aren’t going to be receiving as much support as they do now. Once this access to testing goes away, people will have financial hurdles and delays in receiving a diagnosis of COVID-19. And the reason this is so important is because rapid care after the onset of COVID-19 symptoms is really important for a good outcome. If there are delays, then people get sicker. So the connection between the onset of symptoms and rapid treatment could be broken if we don’t have good access to testing in place.” (Posted May 4, 2023 | Download Video)

Meagan Fitzpatrick, Ph.D.
Assistant professor of medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine Grab This Quote

“You know, I think it’s important to talk about that the sort of end of the emergency declaration doesn’t mean that the virus is gone. It doesn’t mean that we are not going to continue to see illness and death. It doesn’t mean that the virus is weaker, that it can’t cause severe illness. It doesn’t mean that we’re going to stop seeing variants emerge that can cause widespread outbreaks and hotspots of disease, as all of these things can—and are expected to continue to occur. But what it does signify is that we’re no longer feeling like our hair is on fire all the time. So we are pivoting from emergency response to emergency preparedness and bolstering our infrastructure and our resources and our workforce—and getting ready for when something does happen again—another outbreak, a widespread variant that may be more transmissible or more severe—or another emergency that could very well be another infectious disease.” (Posted May 4, 2023 | Download Video)

Rebecca Fischer, Ph.D., M.P.H., D.T.M.&H.
Assistant professor of public health, Texas A&M University Grab This Quote

“For Americans who have adequate health insurance, I think there probably won’t be much of an impact. You’ll still have availability of diagnostic testing and diagnostic kits, as well as vaccines. I think the big greater unknown is what about the uninsured—or those who are underinsured. And especially in places like here in Texas where we have very high rates of inadequate insurance coverage. And I think it’s going to be important for the Biden administration to continue to make vaccines freely available. And I think for the interim period, that will be the case—as well as diagnostic testing—because I think if we allow that to falter, then we could really be in trouble if there is another big surge for this current COVID-19 wave.” (Posted May 4, 2023 | Download Video)

Peter Hotez, M.D., Ph.D.
Co-director, Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development; Dean, National School of Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine Grab This Quote

“Once the emergency is declared over, that doesn’t mean that the disease is gone. In fact, health care professionals and public health officials don’t say that COVID will actually go away as a disease. These are simply policies that will be going away. So for example, at-home tests: We’ve been very fortunate to have access to these tests for free. And after May 11, there are certain demographics that won’t have access to free tests anymore. For example, people with traditional Medicare will no longer receive free at-home tests, and people with certain types of insurance may suddenly not receive free tests as well. It really depends on the insurance. People with Medicaid, I believe, will receive free tests until September 2024. So, there’s a lot of nuances to it. But by and large, it does mean that access to free testing will be more limited.” (Posted May 4, 2023 | Download Video)

Wilbur Lam M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of pediatrics and biomedical engineering, Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center of Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology Grab This Quote

“It’s totally warranted that the state of public health emergency is being relaxed because it’s not appropriate to live under a perpetual state of emergency. And as the viewers know, COVID is becoming milder. So, it’s the right time to drop the public health emergency. But we’ve seen with influenza that some seasons are worse than others, and I anticipate that some future variant of COVID will be worse than others. And we need to remain vigilant that there may be COVID waves that still are potentially dangerous. So just because the emergency is being dropped doesn’t mean that COVID is over. COVID is going to be with us in some way, shape, or form in perpetuity.” (Posted May 4, 2023 | Download Video)

Andrew Noymer, Ph.D.
Associate professor, population health and disease prevention, University of California, Irvine Grab This Quote

“As we get to the end of the emergency period for COVID, it’s important to remember that not everybody is able to return to a, quote unquote, normal life. There are people who are immune compromised or may have other reasons that COVID restrictions are really important for them. And the other group of people who are really affected here are people who don’t necessarily or didn’t have the resources to access health care on a regular basis, pre-pandemic. And my hope for a silver lining to this whole situation has been that maybe we’d see some expansion of health care, some expansion of the social safety net to anticipate these things and to deal with them kind of closer to real time as we go forward in the future. So one of the big missed opportunities of the pandemic for me—and I think for many, many people—is that with the emergency ending, some of these additional resources are going to go away.” (Posted May 4, 2023 | Download Video)

Jon Zelner, Ph.D.
Associate professor of epidemiology, University of Michigan School of Public Health Grab This Quote